Client wants to rebrand but insists on keeping their old website live as well...

[Bryan_Loconto]

I am working with a client in the dental space that has an existing (11 year old) website for his practice. His domain is tied to his last name, which he would like to get away from because he plans to sell the practice in the next couple years.

Backstory: Prior to taking him on, he was working with an SEO agency out of India that were built him quite an ugly backlink profile. Once we discovered it, we immediately notified him about the risk of a penalty if left alone. He was riding high in Google SERP's so of course, it was of no concern to him. Needless to say about a year ago he was inducted into Google's "manual penalty club" for suspicious links. His site vanished in Google and all! Hooray! But no, not really...

We met with him to discuss the options, suggesting we clean up his backlink profile, then submit for reconsideration. Based on the time we told him it could take to make progress and be back up and running, he wasn't very excited about that approach. He said he wanted us to rebuild a new site, with a new domain and start fresh. In addition, he wanted keep his original site live since it is tied to his already thriving practice.

To sum it all up, his goal is to keep what he has live since his customers are accustom to using his existing (penalized) website. While building a new brand/website that he can use to build a cleaner backlink profile and rank in Google as well as to sell off down the line without having his name tied to the practice.

Question: Being that he has an existing site with the company NAP info throughout and the new site will also have the same NAP (just a different domain/brand), is there a "best way" to approach this? The content on the new site would be completely unique. I understand this approach is iffy but in his situation it makes sense to some extent. Any feedback or ideas on how to best handle having two sites running for the same dental practice?

If any part of my question is confusing or you need further details to help make a suggestion, please fire away and I will be happy to give as much detail as possible. Thanks Mozzers!

[MiriamEllis]

Happy 4th, Bryan, and good luck at your client meeting next week!

[Bryan_Loconto]

Thank you for that Michael! Great advice!

I love your scholarship idea, especially since my client is very involved as adjunct faculty at a large university here in Florida. That could be a great way to get a link back to his new site. For now I launched the new site but have it completely blocked. I will be meeting with him next week and am excited to discuss the points you and Miriam have brought up.

Thank you both again so much! Enjoy your weekend and be safe on the 4th!

[MichaelC-15022]

I'll second Miriam's points, above.  There's substantial risk here if both sites are going to be visible to Google.

I'd block the old site in in robots.txt permanently.  I'd never redirect the old site to the new, even if cleanup had been done.  From the penalty recovery work I've done, it sure feels like Google keeps some sort of permanent flag on your site, even after you've done the cleanup.  New, good links don't seem to have as much effect as you'd expect.

For the new site, spend the $$ and do some PR/outreach and some solid, strong links in addition to the core directory links you get via MozLocal.  Do some community service work that gets a press mention; offer a scholarship to dentistry students from a specific school, so that the school will link to your scholarship page.  A few really good links from newspaper stories will work wonders for getting the new site to rank, both in the 3-pack and in regular organic.

[Bryan_Loconto]

Oh nice! I'll definitely check out that thread. Thanks!!

To clarify, since I am caught in a "who to please" battle of Client vs. Google, I was suggesting that since he "MUST" have the site launched by tomorrow morning that I block it from being indexed, which will allow me to launch it for him, yet, buy time to review with him the points you made and get everything sorted out with the old site penalty/duplicate NAP info before having Google come index the new site.

Does that make sense? Oy vey... what a mess lol

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bryan,

It's my pleasure. On your last question, technical SEO just isn't my area, but wouldn't blocking Google more or less defeat the purpose of attempting to build organic authority for the new site leading up to the point of sale? I'm not quite seeing the logic there.

BTW, I just thought of you seeing this coincidental thread over at the Local SEO Forum: https://www.localsearchforum.com/local-business-citations/42391-new-dentist-new-site-same-address-phone-staff.html

[Bryan_Loconto]

Wow Miriam, thank you so much for that detailed response. I appreciate all of your insight, you made some excellent points to consider and discuss with him.

The good news is he is open-minded and keen to staying up-to-date with the times regarding online search, branding, etc. So I think the points you made will be of great value when I speak with him.

In addition, about a year ago I went ahead and slowly began cleaning up his link-profile (against his wishes) as somewhat of a "loyal customer favor". What can I say, I think he's a good dude that deserves to shine! I don't normally do work for free but he's been a great client for a number of years and is easy to work with, unlike the majority we've encountered. I've been able to reduce the penalty down from "site-wide" to just a "partial" penalty. Working on it here and there, trying not to spend too much time on it.

The issue is, he is looking to launch the site for a presentation he will be giving tomorrow, so my plan is to block it from being indexed until I get a chance to meet with him and sort everything out.

Even if I block the site from being indexed do you think Google will see it and associate it regardless because the Google map is embedded and NAP is in there?

Thanks again Miriam!

If anyone else has anything to add or suggest, I am all ears!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bryan,

You've provided such a good description of the scenario. What I see from what you're describing is that this client needs two resouces: a business advisor and an SEO company. If this client came to me, I would first want to know that his plans for selling his practice in a few years were being formulated with a professional analyst who would be able to describe all of the processes and laws involved. Only then would I begin to talk local SEO with him, and I would likely say something like this:

"No further steps should be taken until you (the client) commit to cleaning up the original site and getting out from under the penalty. You should not build a second site until you've cleaned up the first one. Why?

1. You don't ever want to put identical NAP on 2 local business websites. You will just further harm the original penalized site if you do this, and, you'll simultaneously be tying the new website to a penalized entity.

2. Normally, when one completely rebrands a business and builds a new website for it, you would be 301 redirecting the old website to the new one - in this case, particularly because of the needs of dental patients to connect with the dental practice they've gone to for the past decade, but also for obvious SEO purposes. However, you do not want to 301 redirect a penalized site to a new site, signalling to Google that someone they deem spammy now has not one but TWO websites that may not deserve to be trusted.

3. No savvy purchaser is going to want to buy a website that is tied to penalized website. Unless the purchaser doesn't do his research, he's not going to want that, and if he should buy the website that's tied to a penalized entity (either via NAP or 301 redirects) might he not take some form of legal action after the purchase when he hires a marketer who realizes you didn't disclose this info? I'm not a business advisor or a lawyer, so I don't know, but this would worry me.

4. You want to make top dollar when you do sell the practice. Right now, the penalty is decreasing the value of your business and may well be causing you to miss out on patients who could be growing your practice, right now, into an even more attractive offering. "

Those are things I'd have top of mind in speaking to the client, and maybe our community can add others.

By contrast, should the dentist be willing to own up to the mistake he made (hiring marketers who spammed Google) and pay for it by putting in the necessary work to recover from the penalty, the doors open wider as to what he can do. This is where a business analyst needs to step in to advise the dentist on matters like:

1. In a typical sale in the dental industry, does the purchaser normally want to buy the existing website as part of the package or does he want to name his business himself and start from scratch?

2. If he does want to buy the benefits of an existing website, but will not want to buy jonesdentistry.com, does it make sense for Dr. Jones (your client) to begin building the organic authority of a second, more generic domain (bostondentistry.com), while being sure that Dr. Jones' NAP is not anywhere on the new domain? Would building this second domain increase the value of the offering to the purchaser? How much?

3. If it would, when should this development of the second site take place, and at what point should jonesdentistry.com be redirected to bostondentistry.com. Will the offering be more attractive if, a year prior to the sale, Dr. Jones has already made the changeover to his own brand (changing from Jones Dentistry to Boston Dentistry), doing the permanent redirect, updating all of the existing citations to reflect the new brand, and helping his current patients to adjust to the new brand? Or should the redirects wait until after the purchase, leaving the work of citation management and client retention up to the purchaser?

Clearly, there are a lot of large and small details here that need to be hashed out. As a Local SEO, I can only help with some of them, and some I wouldn't dare answer because I lack the credentials to advise on sales, mergers, acquisitions, etc. But, the bottom line here is that if your client wants his website to be seen as an asset that will affect the ultimate price he receives from the sale, having that tied to a penalized entity is not the right move, and could possible even have legal consequences if he doesn't disclose that something he's selling is associated with a penalized entity.

Hope this helps and that you'll receive further feedback from the community.